I don’t want people to think that I am just pointing out negativity so I will start by saying what I like recent changes in codechef. If you are interested in main topic then scroll down a bit.
Many improvements were made like UI is super good looking now. The ide is faster. The rating updates in like 2-3 hours after contests. Quick plagiarism check(I think rating should get updated after plagiarism check but that a topic of discussion for some other day).
Coming to main topic:-
The number of contests, frequency of contests and number of problems per contest has gone up in last 1-2 years.
Number of divisions is increased from 1 to 4 to make contests more balance but :-
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Only two divisions are needed so that pro coders don’t have to waste time solving easy problems to maintain their rating.
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why beginners need different division??
beginners like us can just ignore difficult problems and focus what we can do.
Its not like that being unable to solve difficult problems will decrease our rating -
we still see sharp increase in difficulty level of problems.
This results in sharp drop in number of submission and as a result the ranking depends on speed more than actual prob solving skills. -
Ideally difficulty of problems should increase gradually.
I know its difficult to predict it but lately it seems that contest organizers are unable to manage it due to whopping increase in num of problems per contest.
eg previously cookoff used to have only 5 probs in total and now they have 13 probs. -
Also the editorials are marking every problems as easy-medium, medium
Even if that prob was solved by like 10 people worldwide during contest.
What do I suggest:-
- We are okk with two divisions given that difficulty of problems increases gradually. So you can reduce it to 2.
- Stop marking difficult problems in editorial as easy-medium. I know the authors are pro coders but difficulty should be marked as per general contest participants. It shows why contest organizers failed to make contest more balanced coz authors themselves are unable to predict the difficulty correctly.
Please tag concerned people from codechef who can help.
@admin